The Cutting Garden

This spring I planted a bunch of flower seeds, and called it my cutting garden.
I like fresh flowers in the house, all the time.

I planted 90 gladiola bulbs. They looked really nice, up until last week's 3-day tropical deluge and subsequent flooding. They still look nice, in their abstract-looking array.

I really did not anticipate these zinnias flourishing as well as they are.
Talk about maintenance-free!

I planted 3 varieties of sunflowers, all in three long rows.
I think this one is called Chianti. Or maybe not...
This is a Lemon sunflower.
And the ever-popular Giant Russian sunflower.
They will grow to 10', given the right conditions. (read: no more flooding.)
I did not plant this cosmos bed this year; these flowers re-seeded from last year.
That's MY kind of gardening!
My volunteer plants.
Who knew a petunia would volunteer, in the midst of zinnias and sunflowers?
Again, MY kind of garden! In my cutting garden I have also planted a late row of ornamental gourds and another row of New England Pie Pumpkins. I anticipate that they will be spreading their tendrils about the time that these other flowers are finished doing their thing.

I neglected to photograph my birdseed garden. On the south edge of the cutting garden, I broadcast handfulls of birdseed, just to see what would happen. What happened was that birds came and ate a lot of the seeds, but I have random sunflowers and things such as millet growing - and very appropriately, growing over Manley Peacock's burial plot.

But that's a story for another day...